A couple of days ago we talked about how the RIAA and NAB are planning on asking US Congress to mandate FM radio chips inside every cell phone. This plan was met with some ridicule, so the NAB decided to write a blog post addressing the critics. Most of the post is overshadowed by an overdose of America's favourite national pastime: WE ARE ALL GOING TO DIE. 9/11!

The people in the World Trade Center and the Pentagon didn't have televisions at their desks nor did they have cars in which they could run to in order to make an escape.

The roads were gridlocked with emergency vehicles so even if you could have made it to a car you wouldn't have gotten anywhere. And what's the point of an air raid siren? Are you crazy? Everyone already knew a tragedy was underway and how the heck would anyone hear an air raid siren deep within the bowels of the Pentagon or at the top or bottom of the World Trade Center? An air raid siren would just make it harder for everyone to hear....for those who would be in range to hear it anyway.

I find it hard to believe that people at work don't have something like a radio, anymore, these days. Can't be sure about the US, but AFAIK most workplaces here have one around. The reference to the cars would of course be for that very same radio; getting out would naturally not be an option.

As for the air-raid sirens: no, I'm not crazy. They work very well in informing that something is wrong in the first place (which was shown recently when they decided to test 15 minutes late, here). The space issue, as pointed out below, is a painful oversight of mine, though. Indeed I guess it won't be very practical to try and cover the US with them.

And what good is a cellphone without a radio antenna? (For radio antennas you always need special headphones, otherwise reception is not there) And even if you have reception, what good does it do? Yeah it might inform you, but you could always use SMS for that (The cell networks could prioritize SMS over calls and just send out SMS messages to everyone)

But let's not have a technical discussion. Pentagon, 9/11, yadda, yadda. I only watch FoxNews! Tea party!

The people in the World Trade Center and the Pentagon didn't have televisions at their desks nor did they have cars in which they could run to in order to make an escape.

And the existence of an FM receiver embedded within a cellphone would have made a difference? The buildings in question were wrecked, and so is it not a slightly more sane solution to utilize realtime, local communication such as an internal speaker system? Or are people somehow in the midst of chaos going to camp in a corner, wait for a local source to relay information to a public channel, have go through human processing, and being broadcast back? If you find yourself in the middle of a collapsing building you sure as hell are not going to run to the nearest TV for an update - you are getting the f- out of there. In any other case one would probably have to argue for natural selection.

Further it is very interesting that you assume throwing yet another channel into the mix alongside with sirens, TV, radio and word of mouth would somehow lead to less chaos. Complex systems under stress exhibit an even greater degree of chaos the more stimuli it is fed (of any kind.)

The US has required television broadcasters to operate and maintain an emergency broadcast system for years and it's tested regularly. But most people have moved away from broadcast television and traditional mass media distribution systems...

... Are you aware that radio is a traditional broadcast medium that predates the television and fell out of favor over decades ago? And further, are you going to force people to use something they don't want?

Just as a side note, installing a mobile missle platform on every vehicle is likely to lead to less terrorism.

Seriously, it's time for the USA to have a reality check and realize you are being fed FUD.